The Church of England faces a long reckoning in Africa. Its leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, announced his resignation in November after an independent review revealed his failure to report John Smyth, a serious child abuser, to authorities.
Smyth was found to have abused more than 100 boys and girls over four decades at Church of England summer camps in England, South Africa and my country, Zimbabwe. He died in Cape Town, South Africa in 2018, at the age of 77, without being charged.
The independent analysis of Smyth's alleged crimes, and the Church's attempts to cover them up, make for disturbing reading.
His “terrible” abuse of boys in England was recognized by the Church in early 1982, the investigation was found, but it was not disclosed to the public or prosecuted by the authorities. Instead, he was encouraged to leave the country and move to Zimbabwe without being referred to the police. He is believed to have abused and tortured at least 80 boys in the camps he ran there in the 1990s.
Perhaps his most heinous crime occurred in Marondera, on the outskirts of Harare in December 1992. A 16-year-old boy named Guide Nyachure drowned under suspicious circumstances at a camp run by Smyth. Smyth was initially charged with manslaughter, but the case was mysteriously dropped after dragging on for too long with little progress and many missteps by investigators. Smyth moved to South Africa, not facing the consequences of Nyachure's death.
Smyth was abused as a boy in what he had to raise, the religious conditions of learning and growing up were unfortunately not disturbed. In the years that Smyth was active in my country, the abuse of children by religious leaders seems to be common in many other places. I became acutely aware of allegations of abuse at my Catholic boarding school in 1989-90, when I was a student at the Jesuit-run College of St Ignatius of Loyola, near Harare. There were rumors of things that a few priests had done to young boys. Yet no one spoke about it publicly or tried to do anything to stop it.
I learned about the prevalence of clerical abuse in Catholic schools in Zimbabwe a few years later, when I began researching a book I had just finished about abuse in a fictional Catholic school. As part of my research, I spoke directly to some boys, now men, who said they were abused at my old school, as well as at two other top Jesuit schools in Zimbabwe – St George's College and St Francis Xavier known as Kutama. They told of the worst atrocities, committed against young, vulnerable boys with impunity.
In my questions, the names of three priests were often mentioned. I learned that, as with Smyth and the Anglican Church, the Catholic Church influenced these men in various places to protect them from guilt. I was told that one of the three, whom two old men said they saw raping a young boy they picked up on a street in Harare, was eventually transferred to Mbare, one of Zimbabwe's poorest towns. It is said that they found many victims there.
So far, only one of the three men has been tried and convicted for crimes against children, so he can be mentioned in this story: James Chaning-Pearce.
In 1997, Chaning-Pearce was charged with seven counts of abusing boys at a Jesuit school in Lancashire, England and was sentenced to three years in prison. However, the Catholic Church took no action in the Channing-Pearce case. He faced responsibility because a former student of St George's School in Zimbabwe, who was abused by Chaning-Pearce during my time there, recognized him in Australia. He heard that the priest had been named in an investigation into historic abuse at a Lancashire school and informed the British authorities. Investigations revealed that he had indeed abused children and he was extradited from Australia, tried, convicted and sentenced in England. To this day, Channing-Pearce has not been held accountable for abusing children in Zimbabwe
The main tragedy of the abuse of religious leaders in Zimbabwe is that Catholic schools such as St. Countless children from poor families saw these schools as their best chance to do something. It is sad to know that many of them did not receive the education and care they were promised, but were subjected to terrible abuse.
A reckoning must come to the Catholic and Anglican churches in Africa, as they did in the United States and Europe. As they have done elsewhere, the Anglican and Catholic churches must ask questions about sexual abuse in their schools in Zimbabwe, and elsewhere in Africa. African victims deserve, like victims in other parts of the world, to receive, if not justice, then accountability.
In announcing his resignation over the handling of the Smyth scandal, Archbishop Welby said he hoped his decision to step down would clearly demonstrate “how the Church of England understands the need for change and our commitment to a safe church”.
In 2018, the head of the Catholic Church worldwide, Pope Francis, also acknowledged and apologized for the failure of his church to respond to abuse by religious leaders.
In an unprecedented letter addressed to all Catholics of the world, he promised that nothing will stop the abuse by religious leaders and cover up abuse.
The Pope wrote: “The pain of the hearts of the people affected by this tragedy, which cries out to heaven, was ignored for a long time, it was kept quiet or silenced.” “With shame and repentance, we accept as a church group that we were not where we should have been, that we did not do things in time, realizing the extent and severity of the destruction that has been done to the lives of many people. We didn't care about the little ones; we left them.”
It gives great comfort and relief to see that after decades of silence and attempts to cover up, the Catholic and Anglican churches are finally acknowledging the mistakes of the past and promising to do better to protect children in the future. But so far, their repentance seems to have been directed at white victims of the insults of the religious leaders in the West.
However, the children of Zimbabwe and all of Africa were abused by predatory priests just like their fellow whites in England, Ireland, and the United States. Churches must take immediate, meaningful action to acknowledge their pain and give these broken boys, now men, access to justice. To fail to do so would be to say that the victims of religious leaders do not matter as long as they are Black Africans.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect Al Jazeera's influence.